Thread by @StephenPunwasi

🇨🇦’s public safety minister just said less than 1% of 🇺🇸’s fentanyl is from 🇨🇦, and ditto for illegal immigrants.

Here's why that's a whopper of a lie. Warning: Your opinion of 🇨🇦 will irreversibly change.

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2/ Last year 🇺🇸’s border seized ~19.6k lbs of fentanyl.

🇨🇦 busts in Q4:
- a lab in BC was producing ~4% that volume per year
- a lab in AB produced ~1% of that volume

In 🇨🇦, just these 4 busts in Q4 represented over $1 billion of drug profits.

3/ I doubt that was hand-crafted, artisanal fentanyl destined for sale at local farmers markets. 🇨🇦 has been well aware of this for decades.

The DEA alleged that El Chapo stated 🇨🇦 was more lucrative than the 🇺🇸 & sent a lieutenant as a student.

4/ Quick sidebar on immigration. 🇨🇦 claims it has robust screening, but literally anyone that showed up could get a student visa with an acceptance letter until last year.

No background checks. The letter was never verified. Popular w/organized crime.

5/ back to fentanyl. I'm not a housing guy by trade, my team fell into housing when we were confused by Vancouver real estate prices.

I'm actually a quant by training that specializes in tracking capital flows, legal or otherwise. Money is zero sum, so there's always a source.

6/ when we crunched the numbers back in 2016/17, we identified one party—an organized crime group that stopped laundering in it's traditional region. The flows were too similar to ignore.

We published it. Facebook banned it. Old twitter wouldn't even let it pass in DMs.

7/ after being branded a racist, I get a call from the former director of the RCMP who is dumbfounded by the fact we nailed it right down to the gang.

@scoopercooper dug & uncovered the Vancouver Model—yes, a money laundering model is named after a city in 🇨🇦.

8/ The Vancouver Model is simple:
- drug money is traded for casino chips
- cash out w/a casino cheque
- deposit "tax free winnings" at a bank
- buy a house w/the proceeds & pay the mortgage w/"rent"
- repeat

guys literally went to high roller tables w/grocery bags of cash

9/ fun side note—Cooper did an interview w/a person on my staff, describing the inquiry & the Vancouver Model.

Facebook immediately banned everyone at my company, and I was labeled a critic of China despite me not saying anything, Shout out to the 🇺🇸 billionaire who fixed it.

10/ Money laundering is like cockroaches—a place doesn't just have one. So it was time to look at Greater Toronto real estate.

The fine folks at Transparency International let me help w/a study where we found $25.4b in mortgages w/blatant laundering flags & anon ownership.

11/ Politicians pretended to crack down, but then generated liquidity. Their primary concern wasn't the laundering, but a bust pushing prices down.

Toronto went on to become the fentanyl control center of the world, according to 🇺🇸 (under BIDEN!).

12/ How corrupt is 🇨🇦? One of the world's biggest fentanyl dealers was running his operations using a prison mail system.

That would be absurd in Jalisco, but it didn't even make the news in 🇨🇦. I wonder why. 🤷‍♂️

13/ Most folks don't know 🇨🇦's gov orders media bans, preventing discussion of a case.

A recent case involving the RCMP director of intel (🇨🇦's FBI). The Five Eyes director allegedly leaked to a "kingpin launderer" representing Sinaloa cartel, & terror orgs.

14/ Speaking of the cartel, guess who their banker is?

Good old Toronto Dominion (TD) Bank.

They recently paid the largest penalty of its kind in 🇺🇸 history. That’s a frickin accomplishment.

15/ & speaking of laundry mats, HSBC Canada was recently acquired by RBC, w/odd terms such as lending to the small group of developers in BC.

The finance minister at the time must have forgot they were under investigation at the time of the rushed exit. So weird!

16/ that’s a lot about BC but what about Ontario? To start we know casinos were used for the same reason.

Why? 🇨🇦 was told by an intel agency that the world’s largest car theft gang arrived & is using casinos. 🇨🇦 ignores it, goes on to become a car theft capital. Sense a trend?

17/ after pressure to improve AML, 🇨🇦 hit casinos with new reporting regulations. Surely this will catch the laundering in Ontario, right?

Funny story. A regulator hit a casino with an allegation, and whoops! The AML reporting system for casinos went offline for 6 months. Darn!

18/ When places have low statistical corruption, it’s because:
- it has low corruption; or
- it’s too corrupt to even try enforcing

Ontario resembles the latter when it comes to drugs. No major drug lab busts, but 🇺🇸 seems to arrest a lot of smugglers from ON. 🤔

19/ If you’re starting to think there’s something wrong with 🇨🇦’s government, 🇨🇦’s government feels the same way.

The country’s organized crime intelligence unit estimates 1 in 4k adults in 🇨🇦 are organized crime & 260 organized crime groups work in government.

20/ let’s gloss over the fact that Australia’s largest fentanyl bust was a shipment recently being smuggled from 🇨🇦.

Granted, it wasn’t as stylish as 🇨🇦’s coke/meth in a vintage Bentley that occurred a few days later.

21/ okay, I will admit—🇨🇦 provides less than 1% of 🇺🇸’s illegal immigrants. However, when it comes to supervillains? 🇨🇦 is the undisputed champ.

🇺🇸 border encounters w suspected terrorists are 500% higher on the 🇨🇦 border vs 🇲🇽. 1% of illegals, 80% of terror suspects.

22/ which shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. Remember those launderers above? They launder for terrorists and drug dealers, and business is booming.

🇨🇦 has a strange history as a major terror hub. Like the time CSIS destroyed evidence it had someone on the air India bombing.

23/ or why 🇨🇦 is ignoring a 27-year old Interpol red card notice for the alleged assassin of the Prime Minister of Bangladesh.

24/ Seems a little sketchier than most people would assume, eh?

And we’re only really discussing two provinces. Nova Scotia for instance has “no crime,” but is overrepresented for laundering activity. The port also makes frequent appearances in 🇺🇸 Intel reports. 🤷‍♂️

24/ anyway, I think you get the point.

🇨🇦’s reputation as a boring place where nothing happens has been a carefully constructed facade.

And for those who think that laundering has a small impact on 🇨🇦’s housing market, here’s a thread on why that’s just plain wrong.